The age-old question of "who's the boss" has plagued law scholars and Tony Danza alike, but now there may finally be answer: corporate legal. OpenText's Fourth Annual Survey of Legal Operations Professionals—released last week in conjunction with Ari Kaplan Advisors—indicates that legal operations professionals are taking control of their relationships with law firms, alternative legal service providers (ALSP's) and even their own organizations.

In fact, exactly 100% of the 35 legal operations leaders surveyed agreed with the sentiment that the influence of legal ops professionals has grown over the past few years, a reality that may be strongly tied to greater concerns around efficiency, legal spend and the security of sensitive data.

"They are applying technology where it makes the most sense, leveraging the power of outside counsel in the most productive ways and balancing that with additional internal and external resources," said Ari Kaplan of Ari Kaplan Advisors.

That balancing act begins at home. Per the survey, 71% of respondents indicated that their legal departments were leveraging the cloud, with reasons running the gamut from security to flexibility. One response specifically noted that leveraging the cloud allowed legal departments to build technology independently without having to wait on the IT department.

Kaplan noted that legal ops teams used "the cloud as a means of empowering the law department to act more quickly to respond to the business units to make more proactive decisions and to provide the highest level of service in furtherance of its role."

Much of that newfound proactivity may be concentrated specifically around the practice of e-discovery, where legal ops professionals are both embracing new tools and setting the terms of engagement with outside partners. AI use, for example, appears to be on the upswing, with 51% of respondents indicating that they used the technology in their legal department as opposed to 34% last year. One respondent specifically cited AI's applications in technology assisted review in connection with privilege review.

"I think that reflects more comfort, less fear and uncertainty around using AI to review sensitive data," said Rachel Teisch, senior director of product marketing and legal tech at OpenText.

But legal ops professionals have become just as invested in e-discovery procedure as well as tech. According to the survey, 77% of respondents contract directly with e-discovery vendors, while 42% have adopted a single vendor model. For some departments, that level of control extends to their law firms too, with 74% of respondents indicating that control which e-discovery vendors outside counsel uses.

So why are legal ops professionals becoming so hands-on with e-discovery? Teisch indicated that while cost-control is a factor, security concerns and pressures related to privacy laws such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act are also in play.

"I think that partially what's driving the desire to control e-discovery processes and measures that legal operations professionals are taking have to do with sending less data over to outside counsel, scattered in different locations, different vendors," Teisch said.

The survey results support the conclusion that security is on the mind of legal ops professionals. Among 2019 respondents, 94% said that they have data security concerns, up from 91% in 2018 and 89% in 2017. For law firms, this means that there could be some potentially difficult questions ahead.

Per the survey, 26% of respondents indicated that they often or always inquire about a firm's technological competency and systems, more than doubling the 11% who said the same last year. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who said they rarely or never audit their firms dropped from 69% to 51%.

If this all sounds like a lot of additional pressure to put on law firms and ALSPs, Kaplan said that corporate legal departments having a deeper knowledge of what they want and need is actually beneficial to everyone.

"That understanding is giving law firms more insight into how they can be more valuable to their client, where they can provide the highest level of support and its giving technology and alternative legal services providers an understanding of where they can also provide maximum value," Kaplan said.